U.S. Pat. No. 5,964,815 describes a bus system having a bus master or bus controller. An ignition arrangement and sensors are connectable to the bus.
The Airbag 2000 conference lecture K. Balzer et al.: BST Deployment and Sensor Bus, Dec. 5, 2000, reproduced in the Conference Proceedings, p. 12-1 through 12-5, describes another bus system, to which sensors and/or ignition means are connectable. This is a master/multislave system, a two-wire line being used as a bus. In addition, the power supply is modulated by the slaves, and the modulation is transmitted by the master via the bus when the slaves transmit their data via the bus. The master transmits a request to a slave to receive data from the slave. The slave then modulates its power consumption to generate the response to the master.